


Reality

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Series: The Opposite of Innocence [2]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, The 1000th take on the growing back together climax scene, fluff and I love yous, total self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 20:11:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12440736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: "You love me. Real or not real?"A mini-fic insert for in-between chapters one and two ofThe Opposite of Innocence. But can be read as a stand-alone.





	Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Written because the way Katniss talks about falling in love with Peeta in Mockingjay _sometimes_ makes me wonder the same things Peeta wonders in this fic. And there’s nothing quite like fanfic to sooth your fears about fictional characters.

I hadn’t ever thought about it much, but I always just assumed that falling in love with somebody would happen during some big, heroic, significant moment. Even after Gale’s revelation that he knew he loved me when I was being teased at the Hob, the tiny part of me even somewhat interested by these things just assumed falling in love would be dramatic and sudden, like stories both real and fictional liked to display. I could never give a hypothetical example, of course, because every big heroic act I needed in my life could either not be accomplished at all or could be accomplished by my own hands. So I just let the vague notion be, and buried it under thoughts and feelings of surviving. Or the desperation of loneliness that wouldn’t let me think of anything past that one moment of _connecting_ with somebody _right then_.

But it doesn’t hit like an explosion. It doesn’t sweep me up and change everything, flinging my world upside down and making me see things completely differently.

Peeta and I are in his living room trying to get my left boot off my foot. I’d let one of the young girls practise tying her shoelaces on my boots earlier, only to discover she’d made a tangle so excellent I couldn’t undo it. Peeta, whose shoelace knowledge far surpasses mine thanks to years of double-knotting gone wrong experience as well as all those hours working with Finnick’s rope, had offered to help. Taking turns, we’ve almost managed to untangle the laces completely.

He’s working on them now while I lean against the back of the couch, watching his fingers patiently pick at a particularly horrendous knot. I’m trying not to remember Finnick or watching Peeta tie and untie knots in very different circumstances; the bad doesn’t deserve to crawl into this space with us. Peeta shifts forward slightly and surveys the knotted shoelaces, brow furrowed as he tries to figure out which strand to pick at next. As he contemplates, as steady and focussed as when he’s painting, he absently rubs at his artificial leg.

My mind travels, inexplicably, to the first and only time I’d removed his prosthesis for him. I remember the look of awe in his eyes, and the unshakable feeling of knowledge settling in my chest. I’d picked at that feeling in the months since it settled, trying to understand it. But it’s been as tangled as my shoelaces, and undoing one knot only left me facing more. Peeta feels me staring and pauses so he can throw a reassuring smile my way.

“We’ve almost got it,” he murmurs.

And that’s what does it. He’s still picking at the shoelaces on my boot, but the tangle of knowing inside my head is finally unravelling for good. As it goes, disjointed memories clash and mesh together, all tripping over themselves in their sudden excitement to tell me what they’ve just discovered. I’m speechless. Breathless. Frozen on the couch while Peeta unpicks my bootlaces for me because I’d grown too snappishly impatient to do it by myself. I want to laugh at how _perfect_ the metaphor is. I want to laugh because there is nothing profound or heroic about this moment at all – he’s not pouring out a heartfelt speech, he’s not saving me from danger, he’s not giving an elaborate declaration of his love.

Peeta saves me every day when he stays, when he holds me, when he laughs and makes me cheese buns, when he helps and lets me help him, when he murmurs just the right words to keep me holding on.   _We’ve almost got it_. I’ve had it all this time. And I cannot do anything else – cannot stop myself: I lean forward and kiss him.

Peeta jerks in surprise and then sort of gasps under my lips, freezing without exhaling. I move forward the few inches his surprise drew him back and wait for the shock to wear off. Wait for him to kiss me back. He does, for one long moment, and then he pushes himself backwards and away from me. I sit up swallowing the instinctive flash of hurt, and watch him watching me. He’s starting to shake, and his pupils are dilating. Inwardly, I kick myself for my mistake, and I keep very, very still as Peeta breathes and trembles and watches me with a new air of caution. He scoots even further back, to the very end of the couch, and tucks his hands under his armpits. Trying to hold himself together. Trying to keep his hands from reaching to hurt me.

“Peeta.” I keep my voice neutral and quiet. We’ve done this before, many times.

Before I can go on, he interrupts through clenched teeth, eyes darting to and from me warily. “There are cameras on us. Real or not real?”

His words are as painful as a physical blow to the chest, and they knock the wind out of me for a moment. It hurts that this is what he instantly assumes is going on, but I can’t exactly blame him for the conclusion his brain has come to. I shake my head emphatically. “Not real. There are no cameras here. Nobody’s watching us. The Games are over. We made it out – you made it out. It’s just you and me. We’re in your house.” It takes a courage I didn’t know I had to look him in the eyes and add, “I kissed you because I wanted to.”

Peeta swallows, hard, but the shaking doesn’t stop. His eyes are going back to blue very, very slowly, his face still screwed up in some mixture of pain and confusion that makes me hurt for him. I stay in silence, watching him think. After a while of him silently shaking and panting and trying to hold on, I reach for him. He stares at my hand on his knee with the strangest expression on his face.

“Are you…?” He swallows again, takes a few deep breaths. “You’re doing this out of pity, real or not real?” If the first question left me surprised breathless, this one completely floors me. I stare at him in shock, unable to form a reply. My silence agitates him, and he adds more questions to the air between us, each one growing in desperation and pain and a thin layer of anger I can tell he’s desperately trying to fight off. “You think you… you _owe_ me, and this is you trying to pay me back so you don’t feel so guilty. Real or not real? Or… or… you think, somehow, that we’re both too broken for anybody else – might as well have each other. Real or not real?  Or you’re so lonely it doesn’t really matter to you who –”

My natural instinct is to bite back – his words are searing pain and humiliation, striking home worse than most of his accusations of me being a mutt ever did. They hurt worse because I know I deserve them. Peeta buries his face in his hands, clenching tight at his curls, and mutters an ashamed apology. And then another, even quieter than before, his grip on himself so tight it must hurt. I feel resolve settle inside of me, steel and fire and determination. I will not lose him. And that requires, first and foremost, not making the same mistakes I did during our very first Hunger Games together.

Making noise so he knows I’m coming, I crawl over to him and firmly pry his fingers away from his hair. He’s yanked some strands out, and I run soft hands over his scalp to soothe any residual sting, laying my forehead on his.

“Not real,” I tell him, firmly. “Not real, not real, _not real_.”

And that’s where my words get stuck. I’ve _never_ been good at talking, let alone about things I’ve only started to understand mere moments ago. Panic lodges in my throat as I look at him, close enough he’s a little out of focus. Close enough I can see the raw hurt in his eyes. How do I tell him what is clamouring in my head and in my chest? I want to tell him I _know_ now that this is inevitable – that we would have happened anyway. But those words sound far too much like they’re confirming his hurtful fears; that we’re destined to be together because we’re too unable to bear loneliness to be alone and too broken to ever think of choosing anybody else. It sounds too much like Haymitch telling me I’d forever have to act in love with Peeta because of the story we spun for the Capitol. It sounds too much like I _am_ only choosing him because between sham with Peeta and being alone forever, Peeta sounds like the much better option. And that is _not real_.

“I…” It’s my turn to close my eyes, forehead still against his, feeling the last of his trembling slowly disappear and his quick, hot breaths across my cheek. “I… Peeta… I need you,” I say, thinking back to the beach and the way we’d kissed that night. And then I realise that even those words don’t sound right and don’t really counteract any of his fears. I shake my head, frustrated. “I _choose_ you. And… and… if you…”

The sudden possibility that he could not want me like I want him is so horrifying and painful that I jerk back from him, letting my hands fall to my sides. I remember, with cruel clarity, a night a few weeks ago when he turned to face me as I was getting into bed and said that he didn’t ever, ever need anything more from me than friendship; that he wasn’t ever doing things out of the hope for more; that he was and forever would be content with platonic affection. His almost desperate earnestness – nothing but truth in his eyes and his words – and the conversation topic made me change the subject as quickly as I could, and I hadn’t let myself dwell on that awkward moment until now. What if I’d missed what he was really trying to say? What if he was telling me he didn’t _want_ more than to be my friend – that all the other feelings had been killed somewhere between my lies and the war? Something is rising up in my throat and choking me; humiliation and pain and rejection and is this what he felt when he realised my love for him had been pretend? I swallow and force myself to look in his eyes, and wonder what look is on my face that is making his eyes widen and his hands reach out to grip my elbows instinctively.

“If you don’t want me,” I manage to choke out, “then I will be _fine_ with you as just my friend.” He’d said the same thing so much better. I grope around and half remember one of the phrases he used, so he knows I was listening and that I feel the same. “I don’t ever need more than us just being here for each other as the close-supportive friends we’ve become.” Then I’m left again with my own inadequate explanations. “And I’m not… going to go and find somebody else. Because I don’t want anybody… I just… But this isn’t… And you don’t have to…”

I exhale in frustration, wishing I was better at this. Wishing I’d thought things through and looked to see if he still loved me. Because, really, after all I’ve done and all the Capitol has put in his head of me, how could he? It took so much work to just come and be my friend. And now I’ve –

Peeta leans forward – almost lunges – and kisses me. It’s so unexpected our noses mash and our teeth clash and for a second there’s only confusion and pain. But he doesn’t lift his lips from mine and when I exhale shakily the kiss gentles. His hands cup my cheeks and he kisses me like he did on the beach. And then he kisses me in a new way he’s never kissed me before, here away from the cameras and the threat of death and the tentative, terrifying start of something new and very real between us. This isn’t clinging to him so we can drive away each other’s nightmares. This is something good and clean and wonderful. That hunger from the beach returns, and I cannot get enough of Peeta holding me.

We don’t bother to move to turn the lights on; just say curled up together on the couch, me on top of him with his chest as my pillow. His heartbeat is steady and sure. Our hands are tightly entwined. My boot is completely forgotten. Peeta inhales like he’s about to say the first thing he’s said since his ashamed, broken apology, and I feel myself holding my breath.

“You love me. Real or not real?”

Springtime can exist in a person’s chest, I realise. And of _course_ Peeta would once again give me the exact words I need like a gift. I grasp his offering with both hands, grateful and at peace and feeling more alive than I have in years. “Real,” I tell him, and mean it with every bit of myself.

 

 


End file.
